Jackie Broon

He usually wears a black and white tie, is there anything to read into him not? Or has he just given up on any pretence of support for the club at last.

who the fuck wears lee cooper jeans?

Loads of random objections are just going to be a waste of time, particularly that of the poor planning officer who has to read through and summarise them all, even if they're refusing it. However, if people want to object the only matters that can be considered are amenity and public safety. Public safety won't be an issue on a pedestrianised street so that leaves amenity, the key terms would be 'harm to the visual amenity of the area' resulting from the size, luminance level and intermittent nature of the advertisement. That it would appear dominant and incongruous, not in keeping with the scale of the building and harmful to the street scene. Stuff like that.

What's that based on? Going off the images on the last page which says he paid NUFC £6m for the land and the latest accounts where we have bought it/leases for £50m. Surprised no one is making a bigger deal of it. I remember someone trying to mention it on talksport a few months ago and being instantly cut-off of by Adrian Durham who said the caller was about to commit slander.

That's Rafa's way, he will introduce in his own time. I trust in Rafa's judgement 100%.

Gotta love the spurts from Stiffy's shaky fountain of knowledge.

If you're looking for a way to get at him through the planning system I'd suggest something like applying for a pair of life-sized black and white striped tank sculptures on his lawn.

As I’ve pointed out public opinion can sway the councillors somewhat (if it gets to committee meeting and isn’t just authorised). However they are not supposed to just go with public opinion without legitimate reason and in the end it would be massively costly to NCC and would just be overturned, especially if what you objected too was simply a change in signage. I honestly believe anyone’s time would be better off hounding him on twitter, sending his company anti-Ashley leaflets, and organising a protest at their opening day. Anyone who has read my posts in recent weeks will notice that I’m all for action against Ashley and I’m calling for our action to go further than protests outside of SD in Newcastle. This however really would be a waste of time. Is there anything that can be done in terms of appeals to the City Council to slow things down and just generally make the whole thing a misery of red tape for him? Planning permissions or something like that? Not really. The likelihood is the only planning permission they will need is for a change of signage. Considering the building is ugly as fuck, it's a retail building, and it's on a street with various different types of signage above every door then theirs no chance they could reject it legally. It also isn't changing the use of the building, and as it's all classed as 1 building, the removal of internal walls to create one big unit wouldn't require planning permission either. It could also be that he see's it as a new location for Cruise which is located next door and doesn't have much of a frontage on Northumberland street. He could also just be buying it as part of his and his companies plans to move into property ownership. Aye but even if it's bound to get approved could we not appeal against everything he's planning just to fuck with him? From experience it's worth bearing in mind that strictly speaking a planning officer can only take relevant information into consideration. So you could have hundreds or thousands of objections from members of the public, however, if they have no grounds to them then the planning officer is required to disregard them. The only real information they take into considering is from authority organisations, such as environmental impact studies, police, English heritage etc is they have any objections. There is no reason for any of them to have any objections. It's also worth noting that if a planning committee rejects a proposal, then the council are legally obliged to defend its decision in any appeals process, and if they lose an appeal they open themselves up to being sued by the applicant for legal costs. This happened to North Tyneside council a few years back with the houses that were planned at Holystone. There was no legal reason for the council to reject the application, but pressure from local residents meant they did, in the end the appeal process overturned the planning committee's decision, and it cost the council £1m to defend its decision during the appeal process even though the chief planning officer recommended to the planning committee that they approve the proposals. In this case as any plans for him to move in would be pretty straightforward it's also unlikely that the decision will be made in a publically held planning committee meeting and would more than likely be approved behind closed doors. You're absolutely right that, unless any external alterations are proposed it's highly unlikely that planning permission would be needed only advertisement consent for new signs. If there were As I’ve pointed out public opinion can sway the councillors somewhat (if it gets to committee meeting and isn’t just authorised). However they are not supposed to just go with public opinion without legitimate reason and in the end it would be massively costly to NCC and would just be overturned, especially if what you objected too was simply a change in signage. I honestly believe anyone’s time would be better off hounding him on twitter, sending his company anti-Ashley leaflets, and organising a protest at their opening day. Anyone who has read my posts in recent weeks will notice that I’m all for action against Ashley and I’m calling for our action to go further than protests outside of SD in Newcastle. This however really would be a waste of time. Absolutely right, and in reality the person it would waste the time of the most would be the planning officer.

It's the home office. Unless the rules have changed I can't see how he could get a work permit. He needs to have played a certain percentage of national team games over the past two years; he's not played for the u21s since 2015 and never played for the senior team.

Because Ashley and Whelan have history, plugging DW would be more likely to get under his skin.

One explanation for the unwillingness to spend could be that he is looking to collect his debt before selling the club, essentially increasing value he gets out of it by £100m. Although, the most likely explanation is that he's just a sociopath with a grudge.

I heard directly from a well known sports commentator that Keys is apparently well known to be a thoroughly nasty piece of work and that it was his and Grey's cuntish treatment of a junior staff members, one of whom eventually became very senior, that directly lead to microphones being left on, the results being leaked and their careers with Sky ending.

Rafa needs to just walk. The only person he's helping by staying is Ashley. He worked miracles from February on last season to keep us up, in-spite of Ashley fucking him over in January and the previous two transfer windows, and Ashley just stuck an extra £100m on the valuation of the club for Rafa's effort.

Once the window shuts Rafa should give him a 'you go or I go' ultimatum. No one has more power to influence this than Rafa, if he is willing to threaten to resign. Rafa leaving at that point would mean almost certain relegation. I think he is just seeing out his contract out of professional pride and duty to the fans, but by doing that he is not helping us in the long-run. Our best hope of getting rid of Ashley is for Rafa to give him an ultimatum at the point where he holds all the cards of our survival. Really only 1 winner if Rafa gives him that ultimatum If you want in to work and said to your boss you go or I go....you'd be clearing your desk within 5 minutes And then we're relegated while Rafa walks into a job at a club that will actually back him. Only one winner there like. Rafa walking now would wipe £100m+ off the value of the club. He is the only person who could possibly force Ashley out.

Once the window shuts Rafa should give him a 'you go or I go' ultimatum. No one has more power to influence this than Rafa, if he is willing to threaten to resign. Rafa leaving at that point would mean almost certain relegation. I think he is just seeing out his contract out of professional pride and duty to the fans, but by doing that he is not helping us in the long-run. Our best hope of getting rid of Ashley is for Rafa to give him an ultimatum at the point where he holds all the cards of our survival.

I don't actually think he's taking money out of the club, not in a direct way anyway. In the past it was relatively easy for a club like Newcastle to just be kept ticking over in mid table mediocrity, that was the sweet spot for him in terms of risk/cost vs. reward. That is now much more difficult and expensive to do and I think he now sees the 'sweet spot' as yo-yoing between the Premier League and Championship. In the past his model was to do just enough to stay in the Premier League, saving a pot of money to spend in January if/when relegation looks possible. I think he's now intentionally running the club as yo-yo club, he will not spend while in the Premier League but will save a pot of money to spend on ensuring we get back first time if/when we are relegated. Can't see this being true, considering we miss out on £50-60m of revenue (taking into account the 1st parachute payment) if we get relegated. Ashley absolutely would take 17th each season but his willingness to throw money at the problem (in 2013 and 2016) if we are in trouble shows he doesn't want to get relegated in my mind. I think things have changed since January 2016 he spent then and it didn't work. In January we looked in desperate trouble and he wouldn't spend. Of course he wants us to stay up, but he will not gamble on it as he has in the past. He will only sanction significant spending to get us promoted. That is clearly what is happening. If there is any truth in that and I'm not convinced then it's the most stupid and backward business plan ever. In business terms, when we're competing with clubs who have owners willing to put their own money in or are prepared to run at a loss just to stay in the Premier League, it makes perfect sense. In most cases that £100m+ is just going on transfer fees and wages, pushing a club further away from being able to cope with relegation and doesn't guarantee survival because everyone else has the same or more to spend. The financial sweet spot for a club in our current position possibly is bouncing between the two divisions, being set up to absorb the drop in income of an occasional season in the Championship and every season we stay up being in huge profit. The Burnley model. The problem is they're not being honest about it with us or Rafa, and I think they've massively underestimated how difficult it can be to get back up and how much luck was involved in us getting back first time twice.

I don't actually think he's taking money out of the club, not in a direct way anyway. In the past it was relatively easy for a club like Newcastle to just be kept ticking over in mid table mediocrity, that was the sweet spot for him in terms of risk/cost vs. reward. That is now much more difficult and expensive to do and I think he now sees the 'sweet spot' as yo-yoing between the Premier League and Championship. In the past his model was to do just enough to stay in the Premier League, saving a pot of money to spend in January if/when relegation looks possible. I think he's now intentionally running the club as yo-yo club, he will not spend while in the Premier League but will save a pot of money to spend on ensuring we get back first time if/when we are relegated. Can't see this being true, considering we miss out on £50-60m of revenue (taking into account the 1st parachute payment) if we get relegated. Ashley absolutely would take 17th each season but his willingness to throw money at the problem (in 2013 and 2016) if we are in trouble shows he doesn't want to get relegated in my mind. I think things have changed since January 2016 he spent then and it didn't work. In January we looked in desperate trouble and he wouldn't spend. Of course he wants us to stay up, but he will not gamble on it as he has in the past. He will only sanction significant spending to get us promoted. That is clearly what is happening.

I don't actually think he's taking money out of the club, not in a direct way anyway. In the past it was relatively easy for a club like Newcastle to just be kept ticking over in mid table mediocrity, that was the sweet spot for him in terms of risk/cost vs. reward. That is now much more difficult and expensive to do and I think he now sees the 'sweet spot' as yo-yoing between the Premier League and Championship. In the past his model was to do just enough to stay in the Premier League, saving a pot of money to spend in January if/when relegation looks possible. I think he's now intentionally running the club as yo-yo club, he will not spend while in the Premier League but will save a pot of money to spend on ensuring we get back first time if/when we are relegated.

i find this a strange criticism myself unless there's more detail i'm unaware of, at the time he bought the club ashley was a very successful but reclusive billionaire with the money to buy and run a football club don't know how anyone could predict how things have gone personally Wasn't it also the case that Hall felt he'd took the club as far as he could, and that it would take someone a lot richer to take it to the next level? I don't think Shepherd's mis-management helped, it got to the stage we were getting in a bad way IIRC, by the end I think they just wanted to cut and run and let someone else deal with it. possibly yeah, i'm just intrigued by the idea that hall should have identified ashley as a complete cunt at that point in time when no one even knew who he was... i mean if one of the richest men in the country came in to buy your club and one of his stated aims was to use it to help market his business it's a reasonable assumption he would do more or less the absolute opposite of what ashley has done Hall didn't give a flying fuck about the good of the club. He was entrusted with it for buttons then refused to put a penny of his own money into it (so much so that his wife did to keep Keegan) and allowed it to be used as a cash cow, paying his family millions in dividends, even when we were in the red. I don't believe that he would've considered the good of the club for a second, just the good of his wallet.

He had clearly been asked to drop deep and support midfield leaving Stirling/Rashford to push forward. He did that well, but I think he and the team would've benefited from him as a lone target man with an extra midfielder when we had obviously lost control of midfield tonight, in the 2nd half against Colombia and Sweden. Southgate has done a brilliant job of building team spirit but he's been literally one-dimensional tactically.

Oh well, so it's Croatia losing heavily to France on Sunday rather than England. Has there ever been a weaker pair of teams contesting a world cup semi-final?

I see they've just signed a player from Burton, who let him go on a free despite a year left on his contract. The delicious irony that they've gone from taking the piss out of us for being in the same league as Burton to having to pick up their cast-offs.

Off topic but, the size of that pussy pad Impressed that we have Rogue racks though.

I don't think that would necessarily be the case, the money is predominantly just going into player's and agent's pockets, it's resulting in a lot of very average players on massive wages. On the whole I don't think a shift in funding would result in a huge loss in quality below the top six.

In many ways I think the equality of income within the Premiership is a big part of the problem. I'd actually welcome seeing the TV money distribution being less balanced, going more towards the top half. The massive rewards for just being in the Premiership are largely responsible for driving this desperation of clubs to get there. They're also driving the swing away from traditional clubs to less well supported clubs, whose success is just based on being in a desirable location for players to live, that are making is making it more difficult than ever for clubs like ours to stay in the Premiership. The top six may pull even further away if they got a bigger slice of the pie, but it doesn't look like any club is going to break up their stranglehold anyway.